The Caged Wolf: A Warhammer 40K Short Series
by Mojo1586
Summary: The Dreadnought, both ancient engine of War and peerless fallen Champion of the Adeptus Astartes...to some it is an honor, a chance for the broken to rise once more so that one might serve for eternity. For others it is a lonely existence, to watch millennia pass by in dreamless slumber, to forever stand with yet apart from those they once called brother...but yet they still serve
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Just a little story I've had brewing in the back of my mind for awhile, based off Black Library's Audio Drama** ** _The Glorious Tomb_** **by Guy Haley. Its probably one of my favorite Warhammer stories out there and focuses a little bit on life as a Dreadnought, a superhuman warrior broken and entombed in a near unstoppable war machine to serve his Chapter and his Emperor until the end of his days. They also wind up inevitably separated from their brothers, among them, but apart at the same time. They become more relics than brothers and overtime they endure while those around them vanish.**

 **Weird story for this one though, was originally supposed to be a Blood Raven Dreadnought during the events of DoWII but before writing this I finally bucked down and bought a decent PC and for kicks got SPACE MARINE when it was on sale, game looks freaking gorgeous and that it doesn't have a sequel in the works is a real shame. Anyway I wanted to try online play before playing much of the campaign (Smart I know...), its an old game so not a lot of people still play it. Somehow I managed to land on a full team of four and though these guys were vets, customized and kitted out, and I kept getting slaughtered as some base level one Ultramarine newbie (Only skin they gave you at that point). Thankfully, one of them was kind enough to show me how to go about things. Ended up playing for hours and had an awesome time.**

 **This kind soul's username was Taranis Ormstooth, and he was flying about the map as a Space Wolf Assault Marine kiting orks, so I thought why not honor him. (And then shove his bitter broken body in a Dreadnought...but hey, FOR THE ALLFATHER and all that.)**

 **This is my first Warhammer Story though, probably a one-shot too...maybe, so I do apologize if I screw up on lore or anything like that. Advice and constructive criticism is always welcome. Enjoy.**

 **\- Mojo**

* * *

 **-** ** _The Caged Wolf_** **: A Warhammer 40k Short Story-**

* * *

"Listen but closely Brothers, for my life's breath is all but spent. There shall come a time far from now when our Chapter itself is dying, even as I am now dying, and our foes shall gather to destroy us. Then my children, I shall listen for your call in whatever realm of death holds me, and come I shall, no matter what the laws of life and death forbid. At the end I will be there. For the final battle. For the Wolftime."

 _\- The last recorded words of the Primarch Leman Russ to his Sons and Chapter/_

* * *

 _ **What is your life?**_  
 _My honour is my life._  
 _ **What is your fate?**_  
 _My duty is my fate._  
 _ **What is your fear?**_  
 _My fear is to fail._  
 _ **What is your reward?**_  
 _My salvation is my reward._  
 _ **What is your craft?**_  
 _My craft is death._  
 _ **What is your pledge?**_  
 _My pledge is eternal service_

 _\- Space Marine Oath of Moment_

* * *

 **(Imperial Death World of Fenris, Segmentum Obscuris, 509**. **992.M41)**

The time of deep nothingness is ending, how long I have remained adrift, I do not know...

I know nothing during such times in which I slumber alone in the darkness, no light, no sound, no dreams of which stir me. None, save for those I weave myself. Memories of days long since past in service to the Allfather of Mankind, of enemies cruel and strange long since slain, of battles that could shake worlds long since played out to bloody conclusion...

Memories of a Sky Warrior vanquished, his thread now enduring by the barest sliver, denied to and even now sits before the grasping fangs of Morkai, taunting the Guardian of the Underverse with his very existence.

"...stooth...Ormstooth?"

As the nothingness fades, sensation and sense returns as it always has. And, similarly as before, I am left cold, and in pain.

Not the biting cold of Fenris' open skies, but a creeping chill in my bones, oh but compared to that the pain is negligible...for now. The cold in time will fade and I will miss it dearly, miss the memories of younger days that it evokes when I could've warmed myself with a hearty song and a tankard or twelve of Mjod to start me off easy. The pain...the pain is with me always, echos of my final battle as a free Sky Warrior of the Vlka Fenryka doing battle against the war-lusting Ork Greenskins upon a world wreathed in fire.

Those days when I would touch the sky on wings of fire only to fall upon my foes alongside my Packmates with fury unmatched, bolter and axe in hand...back when I was Taranis Ormstooth, Wolf Lord among a dozen other titles, master of my own Great Company in days passed...days long lost to me, lingering only to taunt me further...

* * *

 ** _"WAAAAAAAAGH!"_**

 _The scent and taste of blood, my blood, clogging my senses...clogging everything except for that all encompassing bestial call that seemed to echo not just in my ears but my very being itself. The call that was at the same time both a battle cry and a force of destruction all in one._

 _Worlds had burned before that sound, buried beneath the cruel green tide, buried like I was now..._

 _Ork choppas fell across ceramite plate like hail, the foul wild eyed Xenos hordes dragging me to the red soaked dirt beneath sheer numbers, my brothers unable to do more than cry out as I disappeared in a mess of screeching mouths and tangled limbs, unable to even make out the glow of the alien sun hanging above me._

 _How annoying, at the height of my glory too, their once towering Warboss in pieces, his blood still steaming on the blades of both humming power axe and thrumming thunder claw, ancient weapons steeped in legacy and honors. Both equally worthless as the rabid boyz chopped and chopped away, digging their grubby claws greedily through Aquila-pattern armor plate, fibre bundles, and the scarred gene-forged flesh beneath._

 _I fought, by the Allfather and the ancient line of my forebears_ _ **I fought...**_ _but to no avail. For every Greenskinned skull I pieced and rends, for every limb I crushed into powder, there seemed to be a dozen, a hundred, bodies upon bodies to replace them, unrelenting, unceasing..._

 _That, in the end, was the trouble with Orks...you could slay their leader before the eyes of thousands, place their forces in the heat of a losing battle with no hope of escape, subject them to woes that would break any other army...and yet when it came to the Orks, they just would not stop!.._

* * *

With those bitter confirmations of pain and cold I know that I at least live, that I have denied the crafty Morkai yet again. I live to fight again, to serve another glorious day in the Allfather's name. For I know my tomb awakens around me, that my Cage is active once more. The Dreadnought...

It bears a name, _Lupus Ultori,_ the Avenging Wolf. A title to shake the hearts of my enemies and echo in the sagas told around the hearths of the Chapter. But to me...to me it will only ever be a prison, a prison for a body that had crossed axe blade and tooth with foul Daemons, viscous Greenskins, and other pernicious Xenos filth, now trapped in a suspension of wires and amniotic fluid, and I will address it as such.

My Cage blinks at me then as if sensing my exasperation, a cursor springing to life in my minds eyes. It is all I can see, my prison's eyes inactive as of yet, my own...my own have not witnessed anything in centuries.

"...eadings are nominal if unsteady...th's being stubborn..." Sound, muffled through the walls of the ancient engine of war, but present.

 _"-/COGITATORS ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA ACTIVE. LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS AWAKEN/-"_ Words stream across my conscious thoughts and cut short my train of thought, screaming all around me. _Lupus Ultori_ has a mind of his own, separate from mine yet not all at once, bestial in a way that had all the fury of an oncoming Fenrisian Thunderwolf, yet none of the drive, the heart, the _passion_ to make it bearable, to earn my respect. It was machine, as foreign as a Magos, one I couldn't simply send scurrying with a grunt. _"-/INITIATE TESTING SEQUENCE. TESTING SEQUENCE INITIATED/"_

The logos awakens alongside the ancient logic engines that house his mighty spirit, and by the blood of Russ it _IS LOUD!_

 _'...Ah shut up...I can read, you blasted...!'_ The meager bark of defiance is enough to put send a fanged smile across my lips, or so I'd like to believe.

Even after all these years, I still wasn't quite certain how much of me was sealed within the Cage's sarcophagus when the Wolf Priests worked their curious arts of the flesh. An arm, much of my head, perhaps a leg though the other I couldn't be sure, my Brothers had never told me, and I had never asked.

Now it was far too late, the years having seen all who would've known most likely long passed, their threads cut, or similarly entombed and out of reach.

" _-/ENGAGING ENGINE. FUEL PUMPS ACTIVE. IGNITION SEQUENCE STARTING. THREE. TWO..._ /-"

My world trembles, a building sense of warmth breaking through the cold to reach my desiccated corpse as my Cage's joints shift, fiber bundles tensing as it stands tall in its cradle deep beneath the icy holds where my brothers feasted and reveled. A great beast awakening from its decades long slumber, eager for the next hunt, the next kill. That much we could agree upon, my prison and I...

"- _/ENGINE TEST SUCCESSFUL. PRAISE THE OMNISSIAH!_ _PRAISE HE WHO BRINGS FORTH THE LIGHT..._ /"

 _'...Yes, yes, praise the lubed cog and whatnot...'_ I tuned out the cries of _Lupus Ultori's_ machine spirit, its calls of status and readiness, its prayers to the Machine God.

Prayer I could understand, but like any true son of Fenris I preferred to practice my faith in action, in pitched battle with the foes of my spiritual liege, not screamed in my mind like some spitting Bloodclaw caught in the battle lust of the murder-make, howling his lungs to the sky.

As my cage attempts to connect to weapon mounts and auxiliary systems, the equivalent of stretching its mighty limbs, lights representing its system array burst into a detailed array of colored text, runes and streams of information that filled my sensorium, appraising me of the ancient Dreadnought's condition.

Ammo counts all irritatingly at zero, shell integrity of the chassis, temperature below freezing as always in the depths of the Fang, fuel levels, elevation, nutrient levels, amniotic status, and more...so much more. So much that I'd long since given up on caring for any but those that would aid in the prosecution of my task, my duty for which I'd denied death itself to continue.

With the barest flicker of trepidation I turn my attention to the top left, towards the date and time, ceased at the moment my last sleep began. How long has it been this time, how long...?

I can sense an intruding presence near me, attempting to access my Cage's systems electronically, running diagnostics, activating and reactivating systems. That sadly meant I was not being prepared for war just yet, merely being roused so that when the time to march did come, I would answer the call without protest...much protest, anyway. Heckling and making the lives of those trained in the sorcery of steel was one of the few amusements left to me, after all.

With a jab of pain, far worse than before I can hear once more, or at the very least I hear through my Cage's ears. Sound returns in a cacophony spliced apart swiftly by the regulators in the Dreadnought's systems, enough to allow me to discern the distant rise and fall of hammers upon anvils, of rattling chains, of massive gears turning...and then, blessed sight.

I see through _Lupus Ultori's_ eyes once more, I see the world upon which I was born, upon which I first learned to walk, to hunt, and to kill. Fenris, the cruel beautiful world that had first forged me, before I came to the Fang and the Chapter and learned the true meaning of that word.

An Iron Priest stands before me now, a pair of servo-arms clunking about over his inscribed shoulder plates as they darted too and fro across my prow. The armor and the totems he carried are familiar to me, the face bearing it less so, a younger man than he who had greeted me upon my last awakening. Curious, an ill omen upon the fate of his predecessor, then. His beard was shorter, blonde, his hair a tangled mess of braids worked through with iron-wrought wheels and loops and lacking any traces of grey. Fangs short, a lightly tattooed face possessive of the youthful energy indicative of those new to the Rout, fresh from the Claws ranks and newly returned from faraway Mars and their enigmatic brood.

A pup in all but role, lovely, just lovely...

From what little I could gather and assume, I was likely to be his first awakening, perhaps even his first experience with the Ancients of out Chapter. Those legendary heroes of old whose names and deeds he'd have committed to memory, aspired to emulate with his every breath since the Wolf Priests first plucked him from whatever meager life he had led before and brought to the Fang to face the trials...to face the beast within.

Unlucky him, I was in no mood to be idolized or revered this day, save such preening for the sons of Guilliman and Sanguinius.

"Taranis Ormstooth? You...You hear me, ancient one?" His voice was hoarse, likely from chanting the sacred rites of activation and maintenance required to awaken my Prison, but even through the distance of my Cage's walls I could still detect the joy in his voice amidst the deference, the growl of anticipation at having his call answered. I knew many of my older fellows refused such summons on occasion, for one reason or another. An eager one, then. "The name I earned is Anveas Stormdust. Praise the Omnissiah, praise the Allfather. I almost thought you might have...!?"

 **-"HOW LONG?"-** My voice, no...my Cage's voice, rumbles like the bellow of a great Fenrisian Mammoth or the titanic shifting of a mountain under the weight of the long Winter's frost. An all encompassing thing that sent fur clad thralls and thick muscled menials scrambling about the great forge in a panic, one that surely threatened to overwhelm the young Astartes where he stood with its weight, but like any true son of the Vlka he endured, though I was pleased to see a bit of wary hesitation in his eyes, it showed some promise. Juvik was a rough language, a forceful tongue of warriors, but when given shape by a giant in both years and stature... **-"HOW LONG HAVE I SLEPT?"-**

My internal chronometer had not yet been updated, a poor sign.

I had to know, _needed_ to know.

It was an old ritual, a habit born of centuries, one this welp had certainly not been apprised of if the sweat now gracing his brow was any indication. I could imagine the scent of his worry, his trepidation, but like so many others this was just that, imagination. All I had were air pressure readings, chemical analysis...hardly the same. A Guardsman's Amasec and a Sky Warrior's Mjod might both make for drink, but comparing one as opposed to the other...pointless.

"H-How long, Brother?" I was not about to ask again a third time, and at least the young marine was capable of understanding that much, gesturing one of the trembling thralls forward, a cogitator in his outstretched hands. "Yes, Chapter records kept by my predecessor who last roused you, Iron Forgemaster Galast Ironhanded, state...!?" He was cut off, the chamber in which we stood trembling as I stretched my Prison's limbs in truth, fiber bundles tearing and tugging at the chains that bound us still. A clearer message was not needed, the welp understood perfectly. "Sixty-Seven years, Lord." He keyed in a few hasty commands, my sensorium flickering for but a moment as the Dreadnought's systems drew forth from the holy data, correcting themselves.

Sixty-Seven years...Rarely had I been kept waiting so long, the fires of war unceasing just as were the enemies of Mankind. Questions swirling about in my head as to the reason, I wanted to ask why, why I had been denied!

Then I remembered it hardly mattered, what was sixty-seven years in the face of centuries of imprisonment? What was time in the face of my duty, my purpose, my last and greatest of joys?

Old and bitter beyond even the surliest greybeards I may be, but I was still Vlka Fenryka! Still a proud warrior of the Rout!

 **-"YOU HAVE CALLED FOR ME, ANVEAS STORMDUST. WOKEN ME FROM THE LONG REST."-** If the lad had been nervous before, using his name seemed to bring back some measure of his nerve, a trick of command I'd learned over the course of my centuries of service. He believed this an honor, I merely didn't wish to bear the thrumming of his hearts beating themselves out of his chest like the hammer of his station any longer than I had to. **-"WHY? WHAT PURPOSE WOULD THE CHAPTER ASK OF ME?"-** Would I perhaps be sharing sagas with the Claws, giving advice to one of my predecessors, or would I be...

"What purpose?" Anveas stood up a little bit straighter, facing even so tiny a perceived challenge head on with fangs bared and fists clenched, golden eyes flashing with a fire that hadn't been there even in the beginning, more than simple excitement, such a simple emotion could hardly describe it. I knew that look, had seen it played across hundreds of faces over the centuries, a look shared by all who bled the blood of the Wolf King from the youngest Blood Claw to the eldest Long Fang, a look I would have no doubt shared if I still had the face to show it. The look of a beast who's picked up a scent. "Why, the only purpose that ever matters, my lord. The Hunt of course, the Vlka go forth to battle once more!"

 _'Ah, perhaps I could find it in myself to like the Pup after all.'_ I wondered, allowing myself to drift off once more as a cocktail of drugs and suppressents was pumped about my tattered system, pulling me back into the darkness of my imprisonment, my Cage closing in around me...

For now I would rest again, but when I woke...when I woke, I would be at war again...when I woke, I would be _home_ once more...

* * *

 **-END**


	2. Chapter 2

**_-The Caged Wolf:_** **A Warhammer 40k Short Story-**

* * *

 _"Hear me, my Brothers! The traitorous dogs of the Neverborn and their maleficarum have fled in the steel and fire of our murder-make and descended upon the world of Seshat in a storm of horrors and bloodshed! The foe is many, come Sons of Russ, lets the fires of our hatred burn the heretical milk drinkers to ashes beneath our boots! They demand battle, now I call for others so that we might give them a war that shall be carved into the annals of history forever! For Russ and the Allfather, let them hear our enemies scream this day and laugh!"_

 _-/_ Sven Bloodhowl, Wolf Lord of the Firehowlers, Great Company of the Vlka Fenryka, presenting a call to arms to all brothers within reach. Missive received via Astropathic Choir within the Fang.

-/RESPONSE PENDING...

 _"The Rout hears your call Bloodhowl, three Great Companies and the Ancients of the Chapter stand ready to answer it. Hold fast, for I shall bring a reckoning fit to make even the hounds of the Underverse quiver, and you...be sure to supply the Mjod, killing traitors works up quite a thirst in these old bones."_

 _-/Logan Grimnar, Chapter Master, Great Wolf of the Vlka Fenryka._

* * *

 **(Imperial World of Seshat Secundus, Segmentum Obscuris, 556.992.M41)**

I recalled fondly how I would once spend the intervening stretches of time spent between battles before I was placed within my Cage, nestled in the bowels of some great vessel of the Imperium, cutting its way through the fouled tides of the Immaterium, that hell of twisting emotions, the birthplace of Maleficarum where the wyrd was kept at bay only by virtue of the flickering gellar fields.

Times spent sparring against my Packmates for hours if not days at a time in the practice cages, beating ourselves until we were bloody and boasting only to retire to our revels, speaking the old tales and reliving past glories with meat and drink aplenty, only to repeat the cycle once more upon waking with hangovers pounding in our heads and fires burning in our hearts. Fires we would slowly temper and hone into a fervor driven fury as the Hunt and Murder-make approached.

By Morkai's bitter bones, those were the days...

None of that for me now, now there was only the long stretches of sleep and armament in the forges and foundries amongst my venerable kin, tended too and doted upon by Iron Priests such as Stormdust.

Occasionally I would be visited and roused once more, asked to apply my experience and opinions to the campaign to come, or to regale the younger Bloodclaws with stories of days long lost to me, their eyes shining and hearts emboldened at my words.

Well, more the words of our generous host's Skald, an old wolf himself, with a flair for the dramatic where my more daring exploits were concerned. I allowed him his theatrics, they allowed me to lose myself for a time in better memories than this one.

Even old Grimnar himself thought stop in to visit us withered corpses, accompanied by his grizzled veterans and their more canine companions, intent on sharing a drink with us, if not in flesh then in spirit.

A good man, the epitome of what one bearing the blood of Leman Russ should strive for, a free spirit. When an enemy finally managed to overcome him, likely killed itself in the attempt knowing the Astartes...I prayed he was allowed to stay that way, he deserved his rest.

I endured weeks of this waiting, weeks of agonizing anticipation, and then...then we finally arrived in system on a sea of warpfire and death, long range laser batteries and missile defense silos tearing into the twisted metal hulks the dregs of Chaos considered ships, overwhelming sputtering void shields and leaving those heretics not consumed in flame to the void. The vessels of the Rout were built for the Hunt, crude but hardy, same as the cargo they carried, and their captains prosecuted this task with a fervor rivaling that of even a fully-fledged Battle-Brother.

They moved about in packs with the Chapter's flagship, the legendary Allfather's Honour, leading the charge, picking off the frantic survivors as they attempted to flee the system, heedless of their forces on the surface. I could hear it even as I sat there in the dark, each kill accompanied by cheers that echoed through the halls as their crews from the greatest of the Sky Warriors to the lowest of thralls howled their approval.

A good thing, it signaled that we would be needed shortly. Very good, my brothers were growing restless, and my Cage could sense it, the ancient spirit within growling its anxious desire for bloodshed.

Within hours the skies of Seshat burned with the remains of the Chaos fleet, their ruinous gods unable to save them the wrath of the Vlka.

Withfirst blood drawn and the way cleared, the Murder-Make could now proceed to the planet's surface. Bloodhowl had taken his Great Wolf's orders to hearts it seemed, driving what remained of the Warband's forces back on several fronts, putting up quite an inspired effort if I was to judge the Wolf Lord, one that brought much glory to his name and that of his company.

The Space Marine was as fiery as his sigil, but by my reckoning it seemed he was just lucky we had arrived when we had. Our brothers on the surface hard pressed by the combined forces of cultists, daemons, and worse...but no longer.

Now was the time to crush them underneath charge, to show these traitorous milksops the price of turning from the Allfather's ways, the price of drawing the ire of Fenrisian steel and bolt.

The time to show them the fury of a Wolf imprisoned...

* * *

There would be no paltry voyage down to the waste dotted surface of the hive world for me, carried in the cabin of a thunderhawk gunship, singing the hymns and battle songs held sacred to our chapter, boasting of kill tallies and victories yet earned. No, I would be descending to the battlefield along a far more direct route, my Cage sealed within the confines of a massive drop pod and launched as part of a shower of similar craft, all hurtling towards our destination of heels of fire and screaming metals. Acceleration played across my form, even within the depths of my chassis, upsetting the delicate internal balance in which my abused body swam like some bloated eel.

It hurt, by the biting teeth of Fenris it did at that, the pain I felt always rising to even greater heights. But all the same, I rejoiced in the sensation of touch, of feeling with my own flesh once more. It had been too long since my it had flown towards the fires and clamor of battle.

Hurtling towards where I had been told the fighting was thickest, our brothers pressed to repel a last desperate onslaught on the part of much the Warband's remaining host.

With the translation of our fleets in system and the subsequent destruction of their only remaining means of getting off world, the cultists and their meager selfish hosts were faced with a dilemma. We sons were the Vlka Fenryka, the 'Space Wolves' as they knew us, and our might was such to shake the stars themselves.

They were already dead, their bodies just not having realized it, but their minds...such devious depraved things they were. All they cared for now was blood and death to fuel their final devotions, whether in hopes of salvation either in this life or the next I care little, they had seen fit to gather in force and assault the largest and most populated of the remaining Hives, Hive Kelebor, seat of Planetary Governance for the beleaguered planet.

Their intent was clear, cause as much destruction as their wyrd twisted souls could imagine, before stealing away in the ships and other transports docked there. Few capable of even reaching high orbit let alone the warp itself, and none able to evade the blockade stationed above standing ready to pluck them from the sky and existence in the event of our failure, and far more besides.

The wolves of Fenris found the notion of defeat a difficult thing to swallow even when faced with such numbers, however we found the idea of a hub of heretics existing on Imperial soil far more difficult to stomach. Hive Kelebor would burn twice over if we could not stem the bloody tide, first at the hands of the Heretics, and finally in a sea of our brothers retribution. But we would not fail, we could not...

If the traitors cared however, it did not show as they slaughtered their way through the surrounding hills, including two regiments of Seshat's Planetary Defense Force with only a token number of Packs to hold them. But no longer, now as ever we were the Hunters, the wretched host our bountiful prey. _My_ prey...

 _'Morkai...Morkai...Morkai...!'_ I began the ancient pre-battle chant in my heart, the words said since days of old when the Primarch Leman Russ and his sons tore their mark into the stars across a thousand worlds, throughout the grand struggles of the Great Crusade, throughout the dark days of Prospero and the Heresy...since I'd first uttered the words, ax and shield in hand, the warmth of my breath touching the bitter chill of the night air. _'...Morkai...Morkai...MORKAI...!'_

Proximity alerts sounded as the landing engines blasted to life, sending my body bouncing about again and drawing my attention back to the task at hand, the duty for which I had lived and died for. _'Finally.'_

A few seconds more of screaming air, the rocking burst of explosions as the heretics tried to halt my approach, my own wicked laughter as they failed to succeed, and then the impact. The vessel striking the ground with force that would've broken a mortal man and rattled an Astartes, but I...I felt nothing. Nothing but the fury...

* * *

" _FOR RUSS AND THE ALLFATHER!"_

The rekindled howls of my little brothers meets the 'ears' of my Cage first as we stride forth, Sky Warrior and Machine as one, lumbering from the dented heat blackened frame of the pod, a battle cry carried over the clamor and weapons fire of battle for all to hear screamed by a brother in praise.

It was a clamor I intended to add too before the day was done, ammo counters for the Assault Cannon on my right showing a brilliant plentiful green, the bladed Lightning Claws on my left crackling with barely contained energy.

The field was sparse of life, more crag riddled wasteland that the traitors charged over the cragged and pitted ridge line in a screaming wave of madness and wicked evils, of twisted mutants lumbering forward on misshapen limbs, of defectors bearing the eight pointed star across their defaced war gear, even a few red skinned horned daemons spitting their maleficarum and brandishing flaming swords.

Heretics and abominations all...they charged through hails of bolter and lasfire, uncaring for injury or those fellows they trampled in their wake, such was their eagerness for Seshati and Fenrisian blood. I took the battlefield in with a heavy hiss of hydraulics and groaning servos, the equivalent of a hearty sigh of fresh air and a stretch to me, picking out where the resistance was thickest, picking targets...

It is my task to break the horde charging down upon us, a worthy task indeed.

While my brothers cheered, the mortals on both sides could only look on breathlessly in those first few moments, the sight of an ancient engine of war marching as if from the remains of a fallen star, clad in the furs of massive beasts as well as protective totem charms from looped fang necklaces to the skulls of a dozen defeated foes.

I suppose I must've made for an imposing sight indeed. More so even, when followed by so many other pods rapidly announcing their arrival, all carrying Sons of Russ, Ancient and Battle-Brother alike.

As was proper, I ended the silence in a cacophony of spitting bolter fire, the cannon springing to deafening life carving a bitter swath across the front ranks of the cultists. Bodies burst apart in crimson tatters under the mass-reactive rounds, many pierced and gored by the sheer force of the explosive tipped death's passage before the shells even had the chance to detonate, dozens cut down in moments. the weapon's barking roar joined by the cheers of the grime coated defenders as Chaos' charge faltered as my fellows joined the onslaught. Towering Dreadnoughts and fresh Battle-Brothers stepping onto the field loosing salvos of rockets, flames, plasma, revving chainsword and ax.

It was an inspiring sight, but yet it still felt...hollow, somehow. Even the weight of enemy fire raining like hail across my adamantium chassis was a distant, muted experience. There was no danger, no passion...

 **-"FOR RUSS AND THE ALLFATHER!"-**

My Cage screamed to the heavens, thundering forward and leading the counterattack without pity, without remorse, closing the distance in moments firing all the while now in tighter, more controlled bursts.

I would receive no more ammunition until the fighting was done and the Hive secure, and as much as I would've enjoyed otherwise, I was no overeager Bloodclaw. No, I had long since learned to savor the Hunt, take my time, even so I could feel blood pounding in my ears, my fang's clenched or so I hoped within the depths of the dark prison.

 **-"I AM ORMSTOOTH! I AM YOUR DEATH!"**

* * *

- **END**


	3. Chapter 3

**_-The Caged Wolf:_** **A Warhammer 40k Short Story-**

* * *

 ** **(Imperial World of Seshat Secundus, Segmentum Obscuris, 556.992.M41)****

* * *

The first cultist to come within reach of my claw, a willowy little wretch in soiled PDF armor and a face laden with fresh scarring, scattered apart in a spray of crimson mist before even that vanished in a flash of ionized air.

His fellows fared little better, one emptying his snub-nosed stubber fruitlessly into my front screaming his prayers to his uncaring patron before vanishing with a satisfyingly wet sound beneath my Cage's heavy feet, the other bisected neatly with the back swipe of my claw, his top half vanishing as if plucked from reality.

And so it went, heretic after heretic rendered down to little more than met before my steady inexorable advance, threads cut as surely as one who foolishly stands before the blizzards of my homeworld.

We were no mere juggernaut, my Cage more a force of nature unleashed upon my foes, guided by my will. Our will.

"W-we care not from whence the blood flows...!?" Another mutant pitched and sent flying with a 'gentle' nudge of my cannon, his spine parallel to his body. Another dozen chewed to slag under a salvo of overwhelming firepower. Targets appeared across my sensorium, bright red, only to vanish moments later before even truly registered their existence.

A fitting fate for traitors, to die without even being acknowledged by their killer.

" _Only that it flooooooooows!_ " A struggling daemon sent sizzling and screeching its foul curses back to the Immaterium within my grasp, fires licking at the blades of my claw even as it moved to cut another thread, and another, and another...a true bounty for Morkai, payment for my continued defiance.

 **-"IT FLOWS FOR YOU NO LONGER, DAEMONKIN!"-**

This was everything I'd wanted, everything I'd prayed for...yet again the distance. I ached for the feel of a weapon in my hands, the resistance however slight as it met flesh, the kick of a bolter in my hands. This...this was duty, this was glory, and it was a dull affair. There was no passion, no burning rage that took me as had once been the case in such melee, no challenge.

 **-"WHERE IS MY CHALLENGE!?"-** Mortal and daemon alike cowered at my annoyance, I killed them all for it... **-"COWARDS!"-** Righteous fury and purpose reinvigorated my flagging spirit, not quite replacing joy, but acting as a suitable substitute in the moment. An enemy that ran at me screaming could be respected, hated, but respected. Cowards...Cowards deserved only one fate, one I would mete out gladly as my claw reaped a bloody toll and my Cannon belched fire and murder, cutting threads with every passing second.

" _FENRYS HJOLDA!_ "

A pack of my kin, howling the battle cry loudly enough to match the roar of their jump packs crashed down around me in formation, taking heart from my slaughter and mopping up the chaff that had as of yet evaded me. Falling upon the remnants with all the ferocity of thunderwolves, tearing into them with a flurry of axe and sword, bolter and mailed fist. Anything to cut as many of these sniveling worms threads as quickly as was possible.

"We fight by your side this day, Ancient one. So do try to keep up! I know you old greybeards tend to tire in your old age!" The leader, an impetuous looking youth barely more than bloodclaw himself with a clean face more tattoo then flesh, grinned broadly as he neatly decapitated a cultist thinking to flank me with a melta gun with an effortless stroke of his power sword before scything the legs from another.

 **-"THAT WE MAY, LITTLE BROTHER!"-** I maneuvered the chassis around, stomping a mutated wretch flat before flaying the flesh from a whole squad under a hail of bolter fire. **-"BUT BATTLE CALLS!"-**

"A ha that it does! And what a lovely battle this is! Come now Heretics, Farkas had enough for each of you!" The Pup spun on his heels, blowing the fanged maw off a bloated mutant that sought to challenge him with a single white hot burst of his plasma pistol much to the joy of his brothers, "Oh ho, now that's a smell boys! Cooked cultist!"

I allowed them the impulsive charge and the friendly barbs, content to wait and judge their work while my cannon tore gaping holes in the hull of a traitor tank, the corrupted hunk of steel no longer fit to carry the honored name of my Primarch. It could not last under such treatment, its crews in chunks and its ammo stores cooking off in an explosion that took even more of the wretches along with it. Figures screaming as their threads were consumed in flames.

My ammo counter shifted into the orange, half spent yet eager for more. The Cage wasn't satisfied, and neither was I for that matter.

These pups were Bloodhowl's own I saw, his ' _Firehowlers_ ', and they did their best to live up to the name indeed, faces alight with near boyish glee as they chopped and sliced through the horde, even using their jump packs as weapons themselves as much as a means of getting about the field, more than one cultists reduced to charred husks beneath the heat of their fury.

One dark haired brother even loosed a spray of flaming Mjod from his mouth, burning the flesh from an enemy's face. So lost was I in their movements, their glee, that I almost lost track of myself in memories, a sure sign of the ages advance, how the truly ancient such as the Fell-Handed managed to endure...

A pained cry split the air, audible to all even over the madness of conflict. A brother, the dark haired fire-spitter stumbling backwards clutching at holes suddenly gaping bloody in his ravaged chest, the enraged cries of his Packmates and my own hissing growl as we realized the cause. That had been no simple weapon pilfered or stolen by the hands of mere traitor guardsmen and filthy wretches, that had been the distinct bark of a bolter, a weapon of the Astartes...or what had once called itself as such.

My targeting arrays already picking out the distinct bulk of power armor, age worn and violated as it was, in the distance as our newest enemy moved into view above us, blood on crimson ceramite shot through with spikes and laden with brass coated chains looped with the skulls of their victims. Eight Berserkers of the Blood God Khorne, sons of the traitor Primarch Angron, the World Eaters...

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" A hulking shape clad in Tactical Dreadnought armor bellowed, the master of this doomed assault no doubt a mess of scarred tissue and cybernetic implants, raising a smoking storm bolter in his massive fist, a gore choked chain axe the size of a mortal man clutched in the other. "SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! THE SKULLS OF WOLVES" A cry soon taken up up by his thralls as they charged towards our tattered lines with a speed only the truly mad and truly vicious could match.

A good thing then, that was what some said of the Vlka Fenryka.

 _"FOR FENRIS AND RUSS!"_

If our lost cousins had expected us to flee, to retreat to the safety of our defenses and give ground, they were sorely mistaken. The young pup's Pack fell upon the new foes with a savagery reborn, barreling many to the ground in a flurry of armored limps and screeching chain blades, supported by a helpful covering fire of an oncoming pack of Long Fangs not at all eager to see the wolf's share of the glory lost to young upstarts.

"If your Bloody God wants my skull, let him come and try to feckin' take it then!" Farkas, as I would've no doubt done in my youth, leapt to face the Terminator Champion with a cry to the Allfather on his lips, spitting before the charge to ward off the evil and trusting in his signs of aversion to keep him safe. "Least then I might have myself a worthy brawl!"

"Insolent mongrel, your soul will meet the Warp and screeeeea...!?" The rest of his words devolved into rabid foam flecked snarling, the instruments and pain engines driven into the meat of his brain consuming the once brutal war-leader in moments until there was only a rabid beast in its place.

It was a thing of madness, not a proper rage, not the fury of the murder-make that turns pure snow crimson and can split the ice with its passing. But by the Allfather's bones it was a thing to see.

An intriguing duel, youth and mobility against ceaseless rage and armored mass. I would've witnessed it, but for the appearance of something far more pressing for more attentions. A fellow Dreadnought, or the thing that had once been a Dreadnought, had lumbered and lurched its way into view, bellowing its screeching vox-static call of challenge.

A pitiful hu;king thing all spikes, chains, and welded adamantium plating daubed in as much blood as it was crimson livery, the stuff dripping liberally from the pair of twisted power claws, blazing hot promethium spewing from the under-slung flamers it carried.

But the mere sight of this horrid reflection was not what sent me into an unexpected rage, that had my old blood burning in my desiccated veins like the lava that coursed within the Fire Breather's volcanic depths, no...what angered me were the bodies chained to its front like trophies, a pair clad in the silvery grey livery of the Vlka Fenryka, both now stained deeply with crimson that rattled and swayed as it stampeded forward towards my Cage.

A Helbrute, the most horrid of fates for an Astartes turned from the light of the Allfather, those trapped within condemned to an eternity or darkness and torment beyond even the pain and bitterness of my own imprisonment. At least I had my kin to make the endless stretch of years more bearable, somehow I doubted these traitors knew of such of brotherhood.

Some part of me felt a tinge of sympathy for the monster, another desired to leave it to its horror and watch it suffer, neither mattered. It was a threat to my task, the reason I still endured, a threat to my brothers, and it _would_ die!

Summoning the soul of the beast beating within my very genes, I howled my intent for the monster to hear and barreled forth to meet it head on, firing from my assault cannon as I went. Mass reactive shells slammed against the chassis of the Helbrute and detonated in showers of sparks leaving dents and marks across its body but ultimately proving ineffective, only enraging the creature further with my efforts.

 _'...Up close then, perfect...'_

 **-"YOUR WEAKNESS OFFENDS ME, HERETIC!"-**

My lightning claw crackled in anticipation as I slowed the Cage's advance, wrestling with the furious machine spirit within and waiting...waiting, only to move out of its path at the last possible moment, dodging the awkward swing of its broad claws. Due to their size, many underestimate just how agile the machines that bear our honored dead into battle truly are, but even so such a motion could only be the product of centuries experience, timed to the second to make full use of momentum and leverage. Temperature claxons still blared to life incessantly as promethium washed across the surface of my Prison, singing the furs and melting warding charms yet doing little damage to the Dreadnought itself. Such pitiful flames could not harm me, nor could it harm _Lupus Ultori_ as the Dreadnought roared a howl of its own.

 _'Or was that my howl, his?'_ I honestly couldn't tell the difference anymore, and that irked me all the further, driving my fury to even greater heights.

With death in my heart, I closed my claw and brought it arcing down like a hammer across the Khornate engine's back in a blow that would've smashed a tank to pieces, the sound of it enough to send nearby cultists to the ground clutching at ruptured eardrums. For such a heavy blow however, the Helbrute was barely even fazed, servos screeching as it spun around and resumed its attack, screeching and howling like a thing possessed...for it might well be at that.

Blow after blow, each capable of reducing a Terminator clad Astartes to scrap and paste struck against _Lupus Ultori's_ defenses,barely turned aside by quick adjustments and subtle maneuvering but still rattling me about within. Meanwhile my own counter attacks gouged deep scrapes and rents in my opponent's chassis, the beast larger and broader then myself but lacking an sort of tactical grace or forethought. Still I could afford not a moment's distraction, its claws tearing screeching furrows in my Cage's walls with every pass, each impact jarring the broken meat within.

It's rage was astonishing, its sheer strength incredible even for a Dreadnought, and whats more the fallen Astartes threw itself into every attack, giving no quarter, no room for caution. I almost admired it for that freedom, that determination, and hated it all the more for it. Sparks and great gouts of viscous black oils and fluids sprayed outward as my claw tore free the Helbrute's arm and threw the monster aside, the entombed berserk loosing its vox-born howls as it attempted to right itself, its own great size working against it now.

I would give it no such chance...

 _ **-"MORKAI SPIT ON YOU, TRAITOR!"-**_

* * *

 **-END**


End file.
